Having a few friends around for Halloween or a full blown Halloween party is a great way for everyone to let their hair down and have some fun. However, Halloween is also about making things a little creepy for everyone too and we want to give you some guidance on throwing an actually scary Halloween party.
In this brief piece we’re going to cover some themes, some activities, some design and some other fun things to add in starting with costumes.
Now if you want to have a horror night then you are going to need to make sure EVERYONE dresses up. Having a few people in jeans and t-shirts detracts from the terror inducing ambience we are going to be striving for so make sure everyone understands that when you send out the invites. With your own Halloween costume you want to go for something creepy and not simply straight out of the box. This way you will be able to play the perfect evil host or hostess. Because of this it’s a good idea to go with something that fits the host role – so a vampire count/countess, an Igor (servant to the evil doers of the world) or a Supreme all powerful sorcerer/sorceress.
Now we want to focus on the decorations – we’ve got a whole guide for this for children you can find here….
But if we’re going to go for something really scary we are going to have to adapt the pointers we gave out there to suit a more adult themed party.
First off we can create a more ethereal room by investing in a cheap smoke machine or some dry ice. We’d recommend the smoke machine as dry ice is dangerous stuff but can be thrown in a cauldron in a corner without too much hassle required. This will give you a good spooky feeling room very quickly.
Secondly we are going to want some candles – and preferably lots. We want to light them and then dribble them by turning them in different directions so the wax runs off. Then put them out so they are all ready for your Halloween party. This plus the smoke will give you a really dark atmosphere so that will do nicely.
Other than that we are going to want our standard darkened room with very low level lighting and lots of fake cobwebs etc. strewn about the place. If you can it’s also great to cover your furniture in dust sheets and move the TV out of the room so it feels more like a scary house and less like your living room.
It’s a good idea to think about all the rooms you’re guests are likely to enter and even better to prepare a few nasty surprises for your guests in all the rooms. A firm classic is the dropping spider behind the toilet door – guaranteed to terrify at least the first person to enter the room. You can get one of these from a huge variety of shops or online so pick one up and have some fun with your guests. Other great options are a dead hand coming out of a cupboard and a skeleton in the closet – make sure your guests hang up their own coats of course J. We’ll explore frightening your friends more closely in another instalment so now we’ll finally turn to some activities.
One of the best and most classic Halloween activities is the Ouija board. Interestingly this actually was originally a board game you could buy from retailers – its legend being largely thanks to a slew of films. Nevertheless it makes a great scary activity that can be very terror inspiring – despite really only being subconscious movements (or so we’ll claim). Play it at midnight by candlelight for some added horror and have fun.
Other great activities include blindfolded “food” tasting, apple bobbing (with suitably nasty surprises mixed in and the ever popular scary story or scary movie. Whatever you do have some fun and don’t get too scared.